400/4 The Brown Bomber, is gonna be a ripper of a Cafe bike.

    Hey Gang

Well sometimes a real challenge comes along.

1. Can you balance  half a dozen marbles on a washing machine at full spin?

2. Can you ride a Skate board uphill in the dark with loose trucks.?

3. whats the chance of building a Submarine out of dried out Camel snot?

And, can you make a 400/4 be a neck aching, rip roaring, tarmac eating Cafe Racer?

The first 3, I have no clue, but, the last one is a Challange I am about to begin.

Right then, here we go, yet another Bike to build and this time its a little Cafe Racer, but will have a bigger heart than Andre the giants turds.

They weighed 14 pounds apparently.?

Anyway, this was kind of a turd and you can polish them if you have a turd sander.

This bike was not too bad, the motor ran quite well but it steered like a row boat with one Oar.

So, we decided to rip the thing apart, to the frame and start again.

This time, throwing in more tricks than a magician in Vegas.

The little 400 sat at my place and stripped it butt naked.

The Motor was pulled and a yoshi big bore kit bought, as well as camshaft and all the goodies from Electronic ignition to Yoshi Camshaft, as well as a yoshi 4 into 1 exhaust set up.

This bike will haul arse.

My mate Chris from MOTO GP did all the amazing head porting, the guy is unrel with heads and inside is smoother than a babys arse cheeks.

Unreal job and this will flow like a new river.

The rest of the stuff I got on with and spent a long time taking the rims apart and taking the old chrome off, then powder coating them Black.

I stripped the hubs and polished the balls out of them and painted the centers, this really turned out to be a trick set up and like the way it looks.

I rebuilt the forks, the old fork oil was blacker than a homeless guys toes and it stank like an old foot too.

Soon got rid of that stuff, my neighbour Trash bin smelt for days.

 ha ha.

New bearings on the triples and of course the frame all powder coated, I started to get things together.

I removed the swing arm and decided it would look so much better to chrome the thing and, I am glad I did.

I also took the rear brake stabilzer arm off and machined it and then chromed the whoole thing and lastly painted the rings red, and it does look pretty cool eh?

Slung the Motor in and I used my NEW freshley made Aluminum Engine mounts.

The originals ones had more rust on them than an old Light pole by the vets house.

So, these new ones were not only cooler looking, I made them 3 times thicker and boy are they nice, so may make a few more for other 400/4 owners if they like, just email me caferacer@socal.rr.com and I shall make some more.

A long way to go as yet but this is starting to take shape.

I didnt want to use the stock tank, as one it was too small and 2. it had a small weeping by the welds.

So I used one of my CB750 gas tanks, cut the bottom and fabbed it to fit the 400/4 frame and I think I am almost there with it,.

The owner wants the body work to be Dark Chocolate brown with gold accents.

So, this time I am going with racing stripes and I shall hand paint the Honda logo in Japanese on the side of the tank in Gold paint, should look great.

All the tins are painted and ready for pin lines and then clear coat and can fit, but more stuff to do first, like make sure I replace all engine bolts with stainless.

I need to use a NEW wire harness and also I am going to use NEW handlebar switches too.

This will be like a NEW bike for sure.

Plenty more to do as yet though.

I need to rip the caliper apart, as it is as ceized as the Titanics shit house door right now and probably has more crap in it too.

I shall clean and polish it and use new seals etc.

So stay tuned on that.

I will eventually take the front rotor out, drill holes in it and then re-surface it, that will look cool.

I am using one of my very own CB750 bobbed front fenders, and that will be a nice touch.

The Motor took some time as the machinist I first used for the boring, buggered the jugs up and took me a long time, to source a good set of barrells down.

but, I managed the salvage what i had and my buddy at MOTO GO WERKS polish and Ported the head at his shop to save me time.

This will be a super fast motor and will definatly pull very hard indeed.

I cleaned the other parts up and thought it was time to get the frame ready for the motor to plop in its old cradle.

The motor is suprisingly heavy for a little 400cc.

But, I managed to lift her up and into the frame and not sweat too much, it took a few minutes to get to sit in coreectly but after a few choice words and graized knuckles, I got the inline four motor in the place it should be.

Once that was in,  fitted my New brackets and was stoked that they fit and looked way better than the stockers.

I also use All thread and Chrome acorn nuts to dress the thing out and another good choice.

I then went about the bike and made sure every hole for the bolts were dremeled out and clean and just fited all the new hardware and that now looks great.

Once the Motor was all tightened up, I then took my self over to the bench and grabbed the old gear shift cover, it was nice and clean as I had polished it, but missing something.

So, out came the old faithful, yep, my sturdy drill and off I went on a tangent of drilling, no pattern just hell for leather until the battery ran out of steam.

Once I was happy with that, I re-buffed the casing to a shiney apperance and got that ready to fit.

But had to sling on the New front sprocket firstly.

The the cover went on and boy does it look cool now.

Then once I had that all tightened with stainless Allen head bolts, I then fitted my revamped oil filter housing that I had machined and painted then buffed again, it sure looked nice with the new bolt on it too.

Now, what was left wwas for me to add the Yoshi pipe, and that fitted really easily, remember to fit the crush washers, as I sometimes have rushed and halfway through tightening the headers, have notice the washers on the floor, but, not this time.

The pipe klings tighter than a Hookers sweater on a Friday night.

I am stocked the way it fitted too.

Once that was all tightened up iIwent about and worked on the coil set up.

I did not want the stock ones as this has a dyna Kit so got the matching coils too.

But, beware, you have to re-work the original mounting brackets to fit these, but nothing a die grinder did not sort out and I bunged them in place and tried the gas tank to see if it cleared and it sure did.

The Cafe Racer is looking like a mean machine right now and I am about to sling the New wire harness on and try and hook everything up.

Can I smell burning?

Ok, back again and my head was buzzing like a wasp nest on fire.

This is a NEW harness from the land of the rising sun, but I think the production line that day were all color blind or something.

It was a bloody nightmare to work out why there are 3 black wores and only two Black sockets and a blue looked like gray and some colors were, well just made up i think.

I have forgotten how many times I had to chase wires and see where they went, to make sure all was correct, then when i tried to see if the switch worked, nothing, Nada, absalutly bugger all was happening.

I was totally pissed off and after that night I had to really get my arse in gear and see what the deal is.

I had a buddy over from japan the next day, he is pretty switched on when it comes to the Science of Electrical circuits and even he had a bald patch on his nogging from trying to work out what the hell his countrymen had sent me.

I think it was a test from Mensa to be honest.

Today was a better day, i think i have it all sorted but now the hard part, cut all the wires to make shorter, as i have lower handlebars, so too much wiring, and do not want to coil it up, as that will cause a resistance etc, so I am now going to have to cut about 10 inches off it and use the NEW Honda bullets and females I had bought back from Japan and start again.

I must give a shout out to HIDEAKI for helping me out, as he made the day a little less frustrating for sure.

Next was to change the intake manifolds and of course add the 26mm CR Carbs that I have for this BIG BORE kit.

These are even more than a pain in the crapper hole than the wiring, these did not want to go on, I pushed harder than some old bird giving birth to an Elephant, but, they would plop back off.

So, in the end, I used a heat gun on the rubber manifolds, that made them softer than the italian World cup Soccer team.

And I lubed the manifolds up more than a hookers dirt box in liverpool.

Then I used a piece of timber wrapped in a tee shirt and laid that across the bank of carbs and got in front of the forks and pulled liked a tug of war.

Finally after sweating buckets, the things went on, and then i had to make sure the stainless hose clamps would do up, it took ages and I do not like the way these fit on 400/4's, please be aware, these are not a ten minute job, the 750 ones are way easier.